Here The Daisies Guard You From Harm
by Chokopoppo
Summary: "Steve comes home from the Quarter Quell. But he comes home different. Bucky's POV." Some people were asking me for an elaboration on Bucky and Steve's relationship in Here is the Place Where I Love You, so this is a short set during the beginning of chapter 10. You don't need to be reading HITPWILY to be into this, but I think it'd probably help. Enjoy!


_And am I born to die?_  
 _To lay this body down?_  
 _And must my trembling spirit fly_  
 _Into a world unknown?_

* * *

In your dreams, he comes home a hero.

You have many dreams from which you awaken with guilt boiling in your innards. Dreams where he was a year older and they couldn't make him go. Dreams where you were a year younger and you could take his place. Dreams where his back could be fixed, dreams where he could take on the careers barehanded, dreams where he came home with a smile of triumph like he was supposed to.

Dreams where you can take his dreams for him.

He cannot lie alone, now - three weeks away from home and the Steve you remember is barely a ghost of a memory. The first week back, he didn't say a word, just clenched a fist in your shirt and followed you silently around the house. The second week, he buried himself in your arms and you held him, small and shaking and _you could have saved him_ from this.

"I didn't kill anyone," he says into your neck, "I didn't kill anyone."

"I know," you say, because there is nothing else to be said.

In the third week, the screaming starts. He shakes violently in his bed, flails his arms out, as though trying to protect himself from an attack, and you shake him awake in terror. He fights tears, coughs into his skinny arms. _You could have saved him from this._

He cannot lie alone, now. You lie with him.

The nightmares still come for him, screaming down with claws in his skin, but you can try desperately to fight them off, to hold him against you, to hide him within yourself and protect him from everything ugly and violent he cannot fight himself.

* * *

Slowly, the Steve you knew begins to shine through again, like a light inside the darkness - you ask him one morning if he's watered the plants, and he snaps back, "who am I, your gardener? You bought 'em, you can take care of 'em," and you have to hold back the urge to sling your arms around him. Instead, you smile and turn back to the coffeepot.

"You are one heartless wench, Rogers."

"You're the one who bought plants you knew neither of us were gonna remember to take care of. Bring 'em in to die, why don't you." You don't have to look around at him to know that he's smiling.

"They make this place look nicer," you say, and pass him a mug of coffee (which he doesn't even bother to thank you for), "it's way bigger than our last place. I don't know what to do with all this space."

"The windows are nice," he says, "the ones on the third floor, I mean. I think they're supposed to look older than they are, though."

"Haven't been up to the third floor. No house needs three floors."

"You should look at them sometime," he says, then stares down at his coffee. The moment has passed, and you can see him retreat back into somewhere inside his head.

He doesn't say another word for the rest of the day, but you remember.

* * *

After maybe three months, he's himself more often than not, but you would be a fool to think he's recovering. Getting better at hiding the problem, most likely - he was always good at that. And just like with the asthma or the flat feet or the colorblindness, you let him pretend everything's fine. You don't push him to talk about it, and you don't say a word.

Except, sometimes, at night.

Sometimes, when he wakes up screaming and you try to show him that he's safe, that you're here, that he _will be safe_ , he begs you to abandon him. Sometimes, he doesn't finish waking up, and he stares at you desperately, tells you to go on ahead, to save yourself, and shaking, you tell him _not without you, Steve, never without you,_ and he leans into you, quiet, tired.

You don't remember exactly what happened the first time you kissed him. Or he kissed you. It's vague - you remember it was an accident, maybe. Pressing your forehead against his, or brushing tears off his cheek or something and then there was…kissing. Closeness bordered on intimacy - arms on your back or your waist, your fingers counting the ridges of his bones. Warm skin on yours. Shaking breath on his.

Maybe it's better not to question it, you think, deep in dark nights when his hands seek out your flesh and you gather him up in your arms. Maybe it's better to just leave it as it is.

* * *

Half a year after Steve comes home from the games, you go up to the third floor. You couldn't find him in his room, and he wasn't in the kitchen, so you follow a hunch up two flights of stairs and into the barren, dustless hallways that top the house the Capitol provided.

The windows are stained glass, deep blues and vibrant reds like you've never seen, glowing like the tail of a comet in the afternoon sun. Steve perches upon a wooden crate and stares at them like the colors can pass through his eyes the right way, his eyes unfocused and distant.

You sit next to him, and stare at the windows, and say nothing at all.

* * *

You want him. This is nothing new. There has been no time, maybe since the first day you met him, where you _didn't_ want him to love you like every girl in the District did.

This is the first time he has ever wanted you back. For once, you're the one retreating.

He wakes up in the dead of night, and so do you, half-dead for the hour of day but with a distinct clearness of mind. Cold fingers press desperately into the skin of your back and you find yourself kissing his shoulders, his neck, and he whispers your name into the darkness. Fingers run through your hair, under your shirt, lips catch yours and he kisses you with a panicked urgency, like he's trying to convince himself that you're real. You're too weak to this - you moan against him, tangle your legs with his.

 _What are you doing?_

Steve was never one to run around a girl, but what he lacks in experience he makes up for in enthusiasm. You run a palm along his arm, from his hand where it rests in your hair to the crook of his elbow, to his shoulder, down his back. He presses himself flush against you, skin to skin, and you can feel his shaky breathing, his heart pounding. His lips break away from you and you gasp, whisper "it's okay, it's okay, I got you," feel him take hold of you again. You can feel his tongue press into your mouth and you wonder, through a miasma, how awake he really is. He said your name - does he know if this is real? Maybe he thinks its a dream. Maybe it's _yours,_ and any second now you're going to jolt awake, hot and sweating and alone.

And then you cannot wonder anything, as his leg grinds up against you and you shudder everywhere, moan into his mouth. You want him - and his skin is so hot against yours and his hands are everywhere and when he breaks away from your lips his breath comes so fast and hard you're half afraid he's going to have an asthma attack or something. Instead, he grinds against you again and your lips tremble with the effort not to cry out. No one has touched you in _so long_ and god, what are you _doing_ as his fingers fist in your hair. "I need you," he gasps, "please, you can't leave, I need you here," and you can feel his fingers on your face, and christ, you haven't shaved in days, you must be such a mess. He deserves so much better than this.

You should say something, whisper reassurances into his ear like you always do and be done with this, god knows he needs his sleep, but he's so close now and his hands on your face and against your neck are doing something to your pulse - your heart is beating so hard and so fast you can't hear your own breath - and you swallow a lump in your throat, push him onto his back, sink teeth into the skin of his neck. He groans, low and guttural and startled, and you want to do it again and _what are you doing_ you grind down against him. His back arches and he swears, which is reason enough for you to do it again, pull a cry from his lips.

More, you think blearily through a haze, you want to give him more than this. Below you, his fingers clench in sheets and he blinks up at you, half-blind in the dark. "Bucky?" He whispers, like it's a delicate secret, and your breath catches in your throat.

"Yeah?" You whisper back, hoarse with desire and exhaustion, and he deserved _so much better than this_.

"Don't leave," he says, and it's soft and terrified, "stay here, stay with me." A hand stretches up for you in the dark, and you catch it in yours, kiss it desperately.

"I could never," you say, "I could never, I could never, I could never," press your lips into his fingers to shut yourself up. "I need you." Drop your lips to his skin, to his chest, his stomach. His fingers squeeze tight around your hand.

You don't know what you're doing. Your own movements are strange and alien to you, like a dance you learned years ago that you can find the steps to without the music. Above you, in the dark, Steve gasps, grunts, makes every manner of tiny, stifled choking noise. His legs hook over your shoulders impatiently, and you kiss at his thighs. His hips wriggle and he groans - impatiently? You can't tell - you can't see - can't remember. You don't remember removing clothes, but you must have, at some point. He's naked as the day he was born, and one of his heels is driving painfully into your back.

 _What are you doing?_

You run your tongue over the head of his dick and he makes a noise you can't describe, something startled and rough and desperate. The heel on your back runs down your spine, but you don't care - you swallow hard, feel the drumming of your heart in your ears, wrap your lips around him again. "Bucky, _fuck,_ " he growls - cries - bucks his dick up into your mouth. Blood pools hot and low in your abdomen - your legs shake where they are on the mattress.

You don't know what you're doing. You don't _know_ what you're doing. All you know is that when you bob your head, Steve gasps out your name, shaking and fast and it's the most beautiful thing you've heard in the world. Your cock throbs, but you ignore it, close your eyes and swallow him down as deep into you as you can, feel his fingers fold into your hair, uncertain at first but quickly tugging at you, shoving you down until you choke. You match the rhythm he gives you, drug yourself on the sounds of his cries, his curses, your own name.

He gets dirty _fast_ \- he goes from soft, desperate begging to "god, fuck _me_ , god, please, _fuck_ me, _fuck,_ " wraps his thighs around your ears, holds you down on him while you moan desperately around him. And then again, just as fast, his toes are curling behind you and his body is shaking, and fingers fly from your hair, leaving you to set the pace as his back arches under you. "Please don't be a dream," he whispers, "please don't, please don't, I love you, I love you, I - fuck - fuck, Bucky, _fuck_ \- "

Your mouth and throat are wet with him when he is done, and he is shaking all around you. You crawl back over him to kiss him, his neck, his ears, his lips. He shakes as you pull him into your arms, shakes as you run fingers through his hair.

"Is this a dream?" He asks you, dazed, and you shake your head.

"I don't think so," you say, finally, "I hope not."

There's a long silence - after a few minutes, you think he's gone to sleep, try to pry yourself away to take care of your own issues.

"Fuck do you think you're going?" He grumbles into your shoulder, "I was almost asleep."

"Stevie, I got - this thing, I gotta - " you motion helplessly at your, um, issue. In return, he grabs you by the balls. Literally.

"Fuck you," he says, as your whole body jerks and you cry out. "Get on your back."

Probably, you should say something witty. Instead, you roll over onto your back, and realize you feel incredibly exposed. You're ridiculously hard against your shorts, and it's still too dark to see Steve's face. "That's your game plan, then, huh?"

"Pretty much," he says, and straddles you.

"Punk."

"Jerk."

* * *

 _A land of deepest shade,_  
 _Unpierced by human thought,_  
 _That dreary region of the dead,_  
 _Where all things are forgot?_

* * *

Neither of you ever mentions it while the sun shines. The next morning, self-conscious, you shave all the messy stubble off your face and neck. Beside you, without a hint of self-awareness, Steve takes a piss, takes a shower, takes home the first-place award for complaining about the water temperature. In the daytime, you don't ever catch yourself watching the curve of his ass when he walks, the pale, bare skin of his collarbones, the way his eyelids flutter when he's thinking intensely. Not anymore.

In the dark, he wants you, and he takes what he wants. You are more than happy to give it to him.

* * *

"Hey, Rogers, I been thinkin'," you say over coffee one morning, and he lets the top half of his newspaper flop down to glare at you in disbelief.

"If you think one more thing, I swear to god your brain's gonna blow your skull in two," he deadpans, then adds "you smarmy fuckin' brainiac," as if deciding suddenly that the first comment wasn't enough.

"Ha ha. I'd rather be a brainiac than a bonehead," you reply, and he 'pff's you off, turns his eyes back down to his paper with something that looks like a smile on his face. "But no, seriously," you add, after a moment, "doesn't it seem…kinda weird that you've been back home for like, a year, and _no one_ from the Capitol's come down here to hound you for an interview yet?"

He pauses - shrugs. "I thought that was kinda weird, too," he says after a moment, "I guess they're just not that interested in a victor from District 12. Maybe they can't get down here," he says, brightening almost imperceptibly, "or the smell drives them off, or something."

You laugh. "Yeah, maybe," you say, turn your eyes back down to your coffee.

You hope to god he's right.

* * *

Only the people in District 12 know the name "Logan". Only the people in District 12 know there was supposed to be a victor in the 12th District before Steve.

You don't know the story of Logan yourself - you weren't even born when it happened - but all the crones in the Seam remember him. They talk about him, sometimes. "He was a wild beast in the arena," Old Aunt Marge says, fingers flying through an embroidery pattern, "a whirlwind of fire and death, he was. Won them games for sure."

You sat with the crones of the Seam a lot when Steve was up in the Capitol, when he was in the games. Hearing that District 12 wasn't _completely_ without victors was soothing - at first. Then it became dark, bottomless. A pit for you to be forever tumbling through, down, terrified for his sake.

"Scared the judges, he did," Marge croons, "scared the whole Capitol. Ain't nobody wanted him around them rich-types, in case he went off the reservation again. They calla him the Wolverine in the arena - guess they only wanted big wolverines in cages. You ever seen a wolverine in action, Jimmy?"

You hate this nickname, but refuse to say so. "No, ma'am," you say instead.

"Reeeal monsters, real monsters," she says, grinning broadly, blind eyes staring into some middle distance. "And that's what Logan were - pity. Pity." She coughs, rocks back and forth in her chair. "Poor boy - didn' stand a chance, in the end - poor boy," she says, and the smile is gone. "He were friends with one of my girls, you know."

"What happened to him?"

She stares at her hands, then far away. Her face contorts into something between rage and terror. "They took 'im," she whispers.

* * *

 _Soon as from earth I go,  
What will become of me?_

In the tenth month, Steve starts going on walks with you. You wish he didn't have to return to the outdoors just in time for the snow and the bitter cold, but he doesn't seem to mind, and with all your years of practice, you know not to say anything. Early in the morning, when the air is crisp enough to bite and the streets are desolate, he folds his hand into yours and crunches the snow under his feet. Once, you ask him if you can kiss him, and he chokes, splutters on his own words and thoughts for minutes, at least, before going a color he'd never admit to and nodding silently. You press him up against the brick wall of the library and kiss him in the broad light of the sun, long and deep, and everything is perfect.

You should have known better than to hope it would last.

The eleventh month is when the victory train is supposed to hit the station, and you cringe at the prospect of a full two weeks where he can't reach you, can't be held by you, can't come find you in dark and lonely moments. You know better than to share these concerns with him, better than to tell him you're scared for him - but they pile up in your gut. There's no reason for anyone to be scared of him, the shrimpy little prawn - and yet in your ears - _they took 'im. They took 'im._ \- Old Aunt Marge's words ring in circles around you.

Steve isn't the only one who has nightmares. You're just better at hiding them - better at shaking them off reality. Better at waking up in a cold sweat in silence, looking to Steve, taking comfort in his presence. He knows about them - he woke you up from one, once, and the sight of his terrified, confused eyes sent you off into a shame spiral. You have no right to even _have_ nightmares, really - you're not the one who was sold out to the games to be eaten alive. But they come for you, all the same.

The streets are dead quiet that morning, quieter than normal. Steve's hand is tucked against yours inside your glove for warmth - his fingers are so thin and his hands so small, he never produces any heat. Gloves don't work for him - his hands just get cold anyway. "Train's coming today," he says quietly.

You kick a rock obstinately and say nothing.

Last night, both of you sat on a box on the third floor of the house and said nothing for a very long time. He leaned into you, and you sang. It was the only thing you could think of to do. Now, you are silent, and beside you, he hums the tune back to you. You could put words to it, if you wanted.

"Train's coming today," you say softly, finally. His fingers squeeze your hand thoughtfully. You turn your eyes to him. "Can I kiss you before you go?"

"It's only two weeks," he says, shaking his head, smiling, "stop being so melodramatic. I was away for longer than that before."

"I don't know if you remember, but that didn't turn out so well, either."

"No one's gonna die this time, though," he replies, "I think I'll be okay."

You sigh and shake your head - furrow your brow. "But seriously," you start, "was that a yes or a no on the kiss?"

"You have such a one-track - " he stops. Mid-quip. Stares over your shoulder. You follow his gaze - Peacekeepers. Walking directly towards you.

"Get behind me," you hiss.

"I don't need - "

" _Now,_ " you snap, real terror rising in your throat. Maybe, you think, desperately, they're moving to walk past you, maybe they're just on their way to the city square. That would make sense - _they took 'im_ \- their boots rattle in unison. They fall astride you. They stop. Your heart leaps into your throat.

Blood is pounding in your ears, but you smile as politely as possible. "Gentlemen? Can I help you?" Never talk back to Peacekeepers. Always be polite.

 _Eternal happiness or woe  
Must then my portion be:_

"Are you James Barnes?"

You pretend not to be startled - you thought they were going to ask after Steve. Instead, you just nod politely. "Yes, sir," you say, and do not dare ask him how he knows.

You dodge the first punch - the second punch - the third one knocks you astride as you yell to Steve, tell him to run - and as you're reeling, the fourth one knocks you flat. You hit the snow hard, cough out your breath - above you, you can hear Steve shrieking some kind of war cry, register him falling against the side of the building as you try to sit up - the bottom of a Peacekeeper's boot hits you in the face. You can feel your nose crunch under the pressure, feel the hot, sticky blood pouring onto your cheeks - your mouth.

Before you can even think to stand up, the boot strikes you again - in the stomach, this time - and you roll over to protect yourself, only to be kicked squarely in the gut again. And again. And again. Your ears are filled with a burning static, and out of your mouth spatters blood and terrified animal grunts. You flail your arms against the leg - legs, there are certainly two of them now - that slam against you. Dimly, you're aware of Steve, screaming your name or crying out from another blow - but if he can scream, that means this isn't happening to him.

It's not as comforting a thought as you would've liked as a boot stomps down on your rib cage and everything burns a million times over. You are pathetic, you realize dimly, you could not save your friend and you will die a fool.

Steve stops screaming, and there's a sudden reprieve of abuse on your body. You jerk your head up, search for him desperately. "Steve?" Your eyes dart frantically. You can't find him. "Steve!"

And then a boot smashes into the side of your head, and you cannot think at all.

 _Waked by the trumpet's sound,_  
 _I from my grave shall rise,_  
 _And see the Judge, with glory crowned,_  
 _And see the flaming skies!_


End file.
